The Sound of Perfect Love

God created us to experience our world and our relationships through our senses. It is fun to think about how love is experienced through our senses, especially the sense of hearing. As I think about it, I realize it is a bit hard to distinguish the sound of love from sounds that evoke feelings of love within us and maybe that is okay as love seems to begat love. 

When I was a child, love sounded a lot like my mom's voice reading to my siblings and I. It sounded like her singing to us on long car rides. It sounded like her whispering, "SHHH...." in my ears as she rocked me back and forth in the aftermath of  nightmares that woke me up. 

It also sounded like my dad laughing as us kids wrestled with him in the evenings or when he instructed us on how to ride a bike or ice skate. 

It sounded like my grandmother's voice calling us to tell us dinner, asking if we wanted hot lemonade to sooth a sore throat, and telling us stories about hers and my mom's childhoods. 

When I started school, the sound of love included teachers' kind voices, affirming words about completed work, or patient explanations of difficult math problems. It included band director's voice cajoling me as I played a hard run on my oboe as one by one the other students gave up, leaving me to play alone. "I didn't stop you!" he said as he grinned from ear to ear. It included the sound of the teacher's voice who knew my mom was really sick, encouraging me to talk to his wife who was the school nurse. 

The sound of love was the sound of my friends voices as we laughed, as we sang together in talent shows, as we talked late into the night on sleep overs, as we confessed our struggles, confronted one another during arguments, and cried together when we lost students in car wrecks. 

I realize now, that the sound of love also included the angry words that masked my parent's fear when they realized how little food I consumed in my disordered state, believing my 100 pound body was fat. 

When I started dating my husband, it was the words, "I love you" being spoken for the first time. It was the words, "I do!" being vowed before our God, family, and friends. It was the words "I am sorry!" spoken earnestly after an ugly fight. It was the sound of his foot steps running up the sidewalk because he couldn't wait to tell me he had passed his biochemistry test. It was the words, "You did amazing," spoken just after childbirth. It was my husband's stern voice reminding the boys their mom is a girl and they must wrestle with her more gently than with him. It was the sound of my husband's voice praying over his family. It was his words, "I want to do this for you. I see it as a diamond need!" It is the sound of his voice singing in church beside me and always encouraging me to go even during the rough times.  

After my babies were born, it was the sound of laughter that erupted during peekaboo games. It was the sound of nuzzling and gulping as they drank from me. It was the sound of their voices calling from the crib, "MAMA! MAMA! MAMA!" It was the sound of little ones saying, "I wuv you, Mama!" as their little arms enveloped my neck! It was the sound of my daughter's voice whispering that it would be okay right after we dropped my best friend off at the airport. It was the sound of laughter filling the tent as the man next door snored like a bear and drunk college kids on either side of us made incoherent stupid statements as they argued back and forth. It was the sound of the kids praying together as we homeschooled. It was the sound of my youngest singing, "My God is so Mighty!" as he flexed his little muscles and my daughter busting out "This is my Story," in the grocery story.  

The sound of love was also the voice of the stranger, stopping by our restaurant table to tell us she thought our family was awesome. Little did we know she was observing the seven of us interact, order, pray, and eat together. She never knew how her words blessed this insecure Mama's heart. 

It was the sound of the principal at one of our kids school greeting me at the door by name. It was her telling me what she enjoyed about each one of my children as she walked me to one of my kids classes. Her words were a soothing balm for the wounds caused by an abusive situation at the previous school. 

It was the sound of my kids' voices expressing their concerns over hurting friends whose parents were splitting, whose houses burned, whose grandparents had passed away. 

It was the sound of sobs that filled the air of our own home when one of their cousins died and the sobs that erupted when one of our kids was ordered to quit giving the gospel by a local on the Indian reservation.   

The sound of love has also comes from pulpits in the form of prayers, in the form of sermons that encourage, exhort, and teach.   

Sometimes the sound of love has come in the form of music, especially when the music is saturated with God's truth. 

It is the sound of the body of Christ encouraging one another and comforting those who have suffered loss and trauma and rejoicing with those who are celebrating weddings, births, and accomplishments.

For me, it also came in the form answers to the many Bible questions I have asked, the calming prayers prayed over me after a man broke into our home, and the pastor's reminder that God is a good God in the revelation of some pretty hard and yucky stuff. It was the sound of sweet conversations and tears shed when we gathered around a friend who lost a child. 

The sound of love is written throughout the Scripture. It was in the words the Lord spoke to Adam and Eve when He called them out of hiding. It was in the words the Lord spoke to Abraham and Sarah promising them a child. It is the words the Lord spoke to Moses from the burning bush, instructing him to lead his people out of bondage. It was in the still small voice whispering to Elijah that he was not alone. It was in the voice of the prophet confronting King David and inviting him to repent. It is the voices of angels announcing Jesus' conception and birth. It is the sound of Jesus' voice teaching the crowds and confronting the Pharisees. It is the sound of Jesus revealing himself to those he healed. It was the sound of silence He kept in the face of false accusations and illegal trials. It was in His cries from the cross, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" and "It is finished!" It was the sound of His voice inviting doubting Thomas to touch His side, inviting Peter back into ministry, and turning Paul's life upside down on the Damascus road.  It was the sound of the apostles preaching and teaching after the Jesus' ascension.  

Recently Amy Perry of the music group Selah shared she has written a song about the sound of love. The idea for the song came from this passage: 

"They shall go after the Lord; 

He will roar like a lion; 

when he roars, 

His children shall come trembling from the west;

they shall come trembling like birds from Egypt, 

and like droves from the land of Assyria, 

and I will return them to their homes, declares the Lord." (Hosea 11:10-11)

As I read these verses, this gal who has been fearful of loud roaring voices was amazed that people would be flocking to the Lion of Judah as He roars. That is the opposite of what happens in nature, for when a lion roars, everything in its path flees. But when the Lion of Judah roars, only his enemy flees, but His children will flock towards Him because we will recognize His roar as the sound of protective, perfect love, which casts out fear. 

As I think of the future I get so excited because we will be able to experience God's love in person! Zephaniah 3:17 says, "The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty One who will save, He will rejoice over you with gladness; He will quiet you by His love; He will exult over you with loud singing." Can you imagine the Creator, the Mighty God, the King of King,, the Lion of Judah quieting us by singing love songs over us? It gives me chills to just think about it. His voice, whether it be encouraging, comforting, teaching, exhorting, singing, or roaring is the purest sound--the sound of perfect love.    

   

¹² 

The Power of Love

I love to read the interactions that Jesus had with people in the gospels. One that intrigues me is often called the story of the Good Samaritan and is found in Luke 10. In Jesus’ day, it was not unusual for rabbis to hold theological discussions in public places. In this account, a scribe who would have studied the Jewish law, asked Jesus the question, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" This question was most likely a commonly debated question, but Jesus perceived the Scribe to be testing Him rather than seeking truth, so He simply turned the question back on the scribe. The scribe, knowing the law, answered his own question by quoting two commandments, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind;" and "Love your neighbor as yourself." Jesus tells him he is right and that if he did these things he would live.

I don't know about you, but when I read those commandments, I can't even get past the first one without feeling strong conviction. I've wrestled long and hard with what it means to love the Lord with all that I am, and I fall short. When I compare my love for the Father to the love Jesus had for Him, my mind gravitates to the scene of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane as He wrestles in prayer over His impending crucifixion where our shame and sin would be placed on Him, leaving Him to bear His Father's wrath for it. The Bible tells us that the struggle Christ experienced there, as He begged the Father to remove the cup of suffering from Him while desperately longing to do His will, caused Him so much angst that sweat tinged with blood poured from His pores. To be honest, I have never resisted sin to the point that I was shedding blood through my pores. 

The scribe, on the other hand, glossed over the first commandment, asking for clarification of the second. Did he think he loved God so much he was above reproach? Or, did this indicate that in his heart of hearts he knew he was failing to love God well and deflected to the second command that seemed a bit more tangible? As he tried to engage Jesus in philosophical general discussion about who one's neighbors are, Jesus skillfully turned the discussion to a specific, practical discussion by telling him a parable.

The parable was about a man who was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho who was attacked by robbers who stripped him of his clothing, who beat him severely, and then left him dying on the side of the road. A priest walking down the same road saw him lying there and he crossed to the other side of the road so he would not have to see him up close and personal. Then, a Levite came by and did exactly the same thing. They may have been afraid for their own lives, they may have been on time schedules, they may have thought him too far gone to help, or they may have just been self-absorbed people who didn't want to be bothered.  Soon, a Samaritan came by and took pity on the dying man and cleansed and bandaged his wounds. He then put the man on his own donkey and took him to an inn and gave the innkeeper two days’ worth of his wages to pay for the man to stay, promising to reimburse the innkeeper for anything else the man might need. Jesus ended the parable by asking the scribe, who was a neighbor to the man in need? The scribe concluded that the one who had mercy on the dying man showed himself to be a neighbor and Christ, in agreement, told him to go and do likewise. 

Our Jesus was not one to waste the words He spoke. He was intentional when He chose to make a Samaritan the hero of this parable. He knew, as a student of the law, the scribe would know that God required Jews to show mercy to both strangers and enemies (Ex. 23:4-5; Lev. 19:33-34; Micah 6:8). Yet, the Jews were known for their hatred of the Samaritans. This meant that the Samaritan in the parable was one who loved those who hated him. He was the one willing to sacrificially spend to provide for the welfare of a stranger without any hint that he expected to be repaid or even recognized for his good deeds. He was the one Jesus used to show us that one doesn't love because one is a neighbor, one becomes a neighbor because we love. 

This parable definitely gives us a good picture of the love to which Jesus is calling us. But even more important, it describes the love Jesus has shown us. Before we believed, we were just like that man. We were broken and dying with no hope of saving ourselves. I love the words Paul penned to the Colossians that describe this, "Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight without blemish and free from accusation." (Col. 1:21-22)  

God has called us to love because there is power in love! It was love that compelled Christ to lay down His life for us. It was love that raised us from spiritual death to new life full of hope. It was love that reconciled us with our Creator, fulfilling our deepest longings to belong to a loving family. It was love that freed us from sin and its power over us. It was love that translated us from the dark kingdom ruled by sin and hate into a glorious kingdom ruled by love and holiness. Our love, whether demonstrated through words, actions, compassion or even restraint, also has the power to draw broken, dying people to the Savior who can transform, restore, and heal. There is power in love that is like no other power, because it can soften the hardest heart, making it tender and compassionate. It can change the stone-cold heart into a heart that beats with fierce passion. And it can take a fractured heart and suture the pieces back together in such a way that hope and joy and love flow with every beat of the heart. That is the power of love.   

Who do you Love?

Every New Year's we hear a lot about resolutions that help us be physically, emotionally, relationally, and/or spiritually healthier people. The resolutions range from making diet changes, to exercising more, to setting better boundaries, to not losing one's temper, to having more date nights with a spouse, to reading the Bible more often, and to developing a consistent prayer life.

This year I noticed a bit of push back towards those stating resolutions by those who believe resolutions set us up for failure. And to me a resolution does feel all or nothing. Once I've blown it, I feel like I've blown it for the whole year. Some of the discussions I heard about resolutions remind me of the discussions the Lord had in Matthew 22. The Pharisees, who were all about keeping the law, posed the question, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?" Even though they were asking with a motive of trying to disprove Jesus, I resonate with the question because I lived in fear and I longed to be a good girl and I longed to please the Lord.

I know I'm not the only one. As a volunteer youth worker, I was often asked how far one could carry out particular behaviors before Jesus (or others) consider them sin. I loved the honesty in the questions, because I think we adults want the same kind of direction, we are too ashamed to express it. At some point we've wondered when social drinking become drunkenness and sinful? We have wondered when does a friendly interaction between two married people moves from friendship to adultery either emotional or physical? How far is too far to go physically in a dating relationship before it is sin? Or, how many times can we miss church before it becomes sinful?

Like the Pharisees, we want clear guidelines. We want to know so we can feel good about ourselves and know we are good people.We may want to know because we feel safer if we know exactly where the line is drawn and what is expected of us. And if there is more than one thing expected, we believe we have a  better chance of pleasing God if we figure out what the most important thing to fulfill is. We may want to know because we may have been in bondage to sin and be afraid that we will be sucked back into it if we don't set a protective bar high. But sadly, that may help us, but we may sin by becoming Pharisaical as we judge and push our standard on others, robbing them of their freedom in Christ.  

Jesus's answer is probably not the answer they expected, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets." It seems somewhat subjective. Not black-and-what enough!

Reading the Lord's words, I remember hearing a sermon on them and asking God to help me understand what it means to love Him with all my heart, all my soul, and all my mind. Those words sound like being completely consumed by love and passion for Him. Though I had experienced moments like that I wasn't sure what it meant to actually live that out continuously. So, I continued to pray for God's help and over the next few weeks, I noticed every sermon I heard was on the love God has for us. Every time I turned on the car radio a song about His love was playing. I also received many unexpected encouragement notes during that time, containing verses about God's love for me--notes written by people who knew nothing about my prayers. I looked up verses on love and one of them said, "We love because He first loved us." and I grasped that to love God the way I desired, I had to first begin to comprehend and embrace the truth of His great love for me. Prior to that, if one asked me if God loved me I would say yes, but in truth I struggled daily to believe it and that doubt often drove my thought life, my responses to God and others and to my circumstances, and it drove my actions.

Over several years God showed me through words and through experience how much he loved me. Sometimes it was when I was showing love to my children, I would sense Him saying, "This is how I love you." Sometimes it was when a friend extended grace that I sensed Him saying, "My loving grace is deeper still!" Sometimes it was in the struggle to overcome sinful patterns, as I cried out to Him for help to overcome that I sensed His presence overwhelming me with love and silencing the angst of desire gone awry! Sometimes it was in the roar of a wave at the beach, or the birds singing in the mountains, the eerie silence of snow blanketing desert town, the roar of the thunder, the tremble of the quaking earth, the beautiful sunrises, and the display of the milky way across the darkened moonless sky reminded me of His loving presence. Sometimes it was in the sacredness of hearing another's pain that I could feel His loving presence wash over us and see the beauty still present in the brokenness. Sometimes I experienced His love as He brought me to specific passages in His Word--passages that revealed how He loves and passages that exposed my misunderstandings of Him and the stronghold of disbelief that kept me from fully enjoying His love.

This was different! Before, my faith had been about me trying to be good. My faith had been about me trying to earn His love. My faith had been about trying not to make Him angry at me. Now, it became about understanding and fully receiving the love He had already demonstrated at Calvary and looking for was to love Him in return.

The more I studied the more I realized how tightly the second command is tied to the first. One cannot totally demonstrate love for God apart from loving others. Matthew 25:35-40, "'For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.' Then the righteous will answer him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?' and the King will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you as you did it to me one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.'" So, to love another visible person well is to love the invisible God the way He wants to be loved!

I also had been a person who struggled with severe self-contempt and came across the truth of Psalm 139. "I will praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made." That concept blew me away! But the more I pondered it, the more I realized living in shame and contempt draws the focus from God to me in a sick way. The more I dwelled there, the more I tended to hide from both God and man and the more I was driven by self-protective behaviors than love. I grew to accept that Temptation is common to man. Paul, claimed he was the worst of sinners and I decided to quit fighting him for that title and just focus on the fact that by faith Jesus took all of my bad on Himself and gave me His goodness. I began to grasp the freedom of the greatest two commandments. By choosing to believe He loved me, I could focus on getting to know Him by studying His attributes and trusting that He is there when I cry out to Him in desperate need of strength to fight sin or in desperate need of grace and mercy in the face of failure. By focusing on the next loving word to speak I can overcome sins of the tongue, not giving into the tendency to gossip, slander, bear false witness, or spew hatefulness at another. By focusing on the next loving action I can perform, I can overcome both sins of commission and sins omission, and the sin of self-protection. By focusing on love, I can overcome the sinful desires not yet weeded out of my heart. By focusing on serving others, I no longer clamor to be served, living with constant disappointment because other broken creatures like me failed to meet my expectations. By focusing on the love of Jesus, I become empowered to love God, others, and myself well, and the righteousness I used to seek is worked out in a natural way that exceeds my frantic efforts and gives a spirit of humility rather than pride. So, who do you love?

Limping to His Table

A few years ago I shared that one of the Old Testament stories I'e fallen in love with is the story of Mephibosheth.  His name is a mouthful, but. his story is an amazing story. It is a beautiful picture of our reconciliation to God. Mephibosheth was the young son of Jonathon and the grandson of Saul. It would have been customary for Jonathon to become king when Saul died, but because of Saul's sin, God appointed David to become the next king. Though David faithfully served the king, Saul was filled with a hot jealousy of David and his God-given abilities. He was also jealous of David's victory over Goliath and resulting popularity with the crowd and his anointing as the future king. In a fit of jealous rage, he tried to kill David and David realized through no fault of his own that the king viewed him as an enemy. This grieved the hearts of Jonathon and David who had a close friendship. Jonathon helped David escape and David vowed to show Jonathon and his family favor when he became king.

Eventually, both Saul and Jonathon were killed, leaving behind Jonathon's young son Mephibosheth. When Mephibosheth's nurse heard of their deaths, she feared they would be taken captive and killed and she fled with the young boy. In her hurry, she fell and injured both of his legs, leaving him crippled.

After David was established as king, he remembered his promise to Jonathon and he called one of Saul's former servants and asked him if there was anyone left from Saul's house to which he could show favor. When the servant told him about Mephibosheth, David sent for him.

I can't imagine how scared Mephibosheth would have been when he was called to the palace of the king his grandfather had tried to kill. He could have run, but he chose to answer the invitation. When he arrived, he humbly bowed before David and David, much to Mephibosheth's relief, told him not to be afraid because he planned to show him favor. When he came to the palace, Mephibosheth offered himself as a servant, but he was given a seat at the king's table,which meant he was now considered one of David's sons. He was also given all of his Grandfather's land so servants could work it and to provide all that he needed, which gave the crippled Mephibosheth dignity. Mephibosheth bowed low and said, "What is your servant, that you should notice a dead dog like me?" There is no answer given to Mephibosheth in that moment. But the answer is wrapped up in the love that David had for his friend Jonathon.

I love this story because each one of us is Mephibosheth! We were born enemies of God because of Adam and Eve's sin. Each of us have also been crippled by sin we have committed and the sin that has been perpetrated against us. We have been crippled in our ability to do good, crippled in our ability to manage our emotions, crippled in our ability to discern the truth from lies, crippled in our ability to love well, and crippled in our ability to worship and to honor our Creator.

Yet, just like Mephibosheth, we have been invited to the palace of the King of kings. But this palace doesn't belong to an earthly king, it belongs to the Lord, God Almighty. Like Mephibosheth we've come with nothing to offer our King. Just as Mephibosheth found mercy because of David's love for Jonathon, we have found mercy because of the Father's love for Jesus and His payment for our sin. Like Mephibosheth, we who didn't even deserve to be servants have been made joint heirs with the Son of God. That means that we, too, have a place set at the King of king's table.

There is a reason this story is so precious to me. A few years ago, I suffered a severely broken ankle. After seven months in a cast, I was finally given permission to walk without crutches and without the cast. At first, my ankle joint was frozen and my walk, as one friend called it, was a slow, labored hobble. Oh, how I hated the hobble, until God reminded me of Mephibosheth's story. I could so relate to him making his way to the king's table. I could even imagine the sound of his labored steps as he came to the table. Over time the joint loosened a bit and on good days the limp is barely noticeable. However, occasionally I overdo it and I hurt and the limp becomes more pronounced, reminding me once again of Mephibosheth and how he, who was once David's enemy, came to be seated at the king's table. And once again I am reminded of our stories and how we, who were once enemies of the King, are seated at His table. I am also reminded that through through His divine power He has given us every thing we need for a godly life through the knowledge of Jesus who called us by His own glory and goodness. Over time I've let go of the shame I associated with my limp and have grown thankful for a very real physical picture of how I have been reconciled to the King of kings. I know that as we, God's crippled children  hobble to His table, we are met with grace and mercy and we are loved with a love that has been shown through Christ's work of reconciliation. We come limping, but the Father sees us as we will be in glory.

Struggling to Love Well

"Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude.
It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful,
it does not rejoice at wrong doing, but rejoices with the truth.
Love bears all things, believes all things,
hope all things, endures all things. Love never ends."

1Corinthians 13:4-8a  

 

Love is a concept that is hard to express. Because of this the Greek Language had many words used to describe different kinds of love. One word was used for sexual love, one for friendship, one for relational comfort, and still another for sacrificial love. As I have shared before, I realized years ago that I didn't know how to love God with all of my heart, mind, and soul and I was frustrated at my inability to love people well. I wanted to love, but fear, self-centeredness, self-protection, and a lack of compassion seemed to get in the way.

As I studied the Scriptures pertaining to love, God reminded me of the verse that says we love because He first loved us. I realized then that it is God who fills our empty hearts with love and enables us to love well. Before I understood this, I had spent a lot of time trying to earn love from people as well as God, not realizing Christ had already demonstrated God's love to me through Christ's death. The love I was so desperately trying to earn and trying to muster up to give away was something I already possessed. I had stronghold that caused me to believe I was unloved. It's sad that I didn't enjoy His love simply because of my own unbelief.  

I realized to love God and others I had to first believe God's love for me was real, tangible,  and  personal. As I spend time in His word, I am filled with His love and I am able to love others better. Sometimes I mistakenly think I am getting this love thing down and then God has me spend time with a group of people, which then reveals how far I still have to go to consistently love as He loves. Sometimes it's a ministry opportunity that He gives me and I find myself sitting across from a woman telling her story. As an outsider, it's easy to see how she hurts herself by believing lies and making the choices she makes. Sometimes, I get glimpses of how she is also hurting her family and I can find myself getting impatient and angry with her. I realize there is a righteous anger, but it doesn't take much for a judgmental spirit to meld righteous anger into unholy disdain. If I allow that to happen because I fail to stay connected to God, the love the lady desperately needs to experience is unavailable, the grace she needs to be bathed in is overshadowed by harshness, and the truth she needs to discover sure isn't flowing from  my mouth.

I think many of us experience this struggle with loving well during the holidays as we spend time with extended family.  We so often find it easier to be loving towards friends than towards family.  There are several reasons for this. First, maybe it's because we think we know each other better than we do. The reality is we are all individuals with differing personalities and experiences. In addition, the longer we've been apart from family new experiences and new people have continued to mold us individually, some positively and some negatively.

Second, we often have unfinished emotional business from the past and we tend to view each other through lenses that we developed growing up. We have a hard time seeing things as they actually are.
Our views are tainted by what we already believe.

Third, most of us didn't learn to set boundaries in families of origin and we allow each other get away with disrespectful and rude behavior. We know full well we would not treat co-workers or friends the way we treat family members; nor, would we judge friends as harshly as we do siblings. Most of us as kids weren't taught to handle conflict respectfully and because of this there are often deep wounds unhealed. Most of us weren't allowed to confront rude or wounding behaviors and if we tried to address such things we were told to suck it up, to forgive, or to quit being so sensitive. Now either shame or pride keeps us from having healing conversations, talking about pain that is being currently inflicted, and wanting to look more together than we really are.  

I, for one, often come out of the holidays with a heavy heart because I know I didn't love as well as I wanted to. I experienced and expressed impatience and frustration. I didn't speak the truth as lovingly as I desired. I participated in unkind gossip. I know the disappoint I feel is because I use the Scripture as a bar to measure how well I love. God describes love with some "is's," some "is not's." some "does not's," and some "does." As the verse above states: Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is not envious. Love is not boastful. Love is not arrogant. Love is not rude. Love is not irritable. Love is not resentful. Love does not rejoice in wrong doing. Love does rejoice with truth. Love does bear all things. Love does hope all things. Love does endure all things. Love does not end...mmmm....sounds a lot like the way Jesus loves.

I know during the holidays there were times my lack of love was obvious because it came out in impatient or harsh words. It came out in my actions when I left the room to keep from spouting angry words or made sarcastic statements followed by a laugh to make it look like a joke. It came out in my lack of attention when someone was speaking to me. There were other times my lack of love may have been invisible to others, but believe me I was wrestling with it in my heart, which is impatience, arrogance, irritability, and resentful thoughts masked behind a smile.

There is a fleshly part of me that simply wants to avoid big family functions and some ministry events to avoid the guilt and shame that comes from loving so poorly. But the Word says, "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I am nothing." This tells me that the books I've written, the sacrifices I've made, the money and gifts given are all nothing if I don't choose to love well. The truth is that it is impossible to learn to love well by isolating. I have to rub shoulders with others in order for my sinful and unloving ways to be exposed, confessed, and changed. But, so often instead of embracing exposure, I find myself wanting to blame others. I find myself wanting to criticize instead of dealing with my impatience, unkindness, envy, arrogance, and resentment. I find myself wanting to point out others' flaws instead of dealing with the my own blaring flaws revealed by interactions. I confess I sometimes want to walk away instead of facing the truth of how little it takes to not be willing to bear with another or give up the hope that a relationships can change, grow, or flourish with a bit of humility and work on my part. I am a person who desires quick fixes and instant gratification, but the truth is in this broken world relationships aren't easy because they are laden with emotional baggage and hot buttons easily pushed. It isn't easy for me who wants control so I can protect my heart, preserve my pride, and deflect the pain I hate to experience.

I often ask myself how I can love better. There are some things I've come up with--some practical and some of a more spiritual nature. First, I can eat healthy, get plenty of sleep, and exercise. This helps me to deal with the anxiety that rises in social settings. We don't like to admit it, but our bodies, souls, and spirits are intricately connected and impact how we relate in huge ways. As an introvert, I also know that I can take breaks when I feel depleted.

Second, I can check my expectations at the door of every meeting and social setting. That means I give up the right of expecting others to be a certain way, choosing, instead, to accept them as they really are. It means I give up the expectations I have of how I think we will relate and/or interact and accept the truth of where we are in our relationship at any given moment. It also means I look to God, not the other person to fix pain, resolve loneliness, and fill my love-starved heart.

Third, I give up the right to judge and choose to be curious about other people. Often their behavior is driven by what they have experienced, what they fear, or what they desire. If I am curious and ask more questions, I may understand a person better and have more compassion and be more caring in my interactions with them. I may also have the opportunity to be a conduit of grace, love, and healing for him or her.

Fourth, if I feel God leading me to speak His truth into a situation I can choose to take time to pray about it, choose the timing carefully, and choose to do so in a loving manner.

Fifth, I can choose to live loved. This means that I choose to connect daily with God and let Him fill me with His love. When I do that, I am more confident, content, and kind. When I do that, I am more patient, kind, and forgiving. When I do that, I am less confused, not as easily wounded, and not as offended by thoughtless comments, relational neglect, or careless actions. When I do that I am more concerned with a person's heart than how they treat me. When I do that, I am more about giving love than trying to extract it from others.

Sixth, I can choose to live graced. In this life I know I'll always love imperfectly. I can choose to wallow in my failure or I can choose to live life in faith, graced by God so I can seek forgiveness,  love even when it is messy, and move past my failures. When I do this, I'm more apt to extend grace. When I do this, I am able to value relationships enough to do the hard work they take. When I do this I become more like Jesus than at any other time.

So, living isolated is not an option for this Christ follower! He set the example of love by leaving the Safe love He knew from eternity to live relationally with people like us. He walked with, talked with, and ministered to broken people with a bent to sin. He shared His heart, confronted, encouraged, and bore their sin in His body, and ultimately sacrificed His life for them and for us. Comfort wasn't His goal, love was. Even when He was misunderstood, rejected, and slandered, He still loved.

The prayer of my heart this year will be: "Lord help me to recognize your love and fill me with it. Please give me the desire, the ability, and the wisdom to love others well. Help me to love You with all of my heart, my mind, my soul, and my might. Help me to love others with the same sacrificial love you showed me."

 

Love is in the Most Unlikely Places

"That according to the riches of His glory

He may grant you to be strengthened in you inner being, so

--That you, being rooted and grounded in love,

may have strength to comprehend with all the saints

what is the breadth and length and height and depth,

and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge,

that you may be filled with all the fullness of God."

Ephesians 3:17b-19 

 

Many years ago, I found myself driving from Texas to Mississippi to attend a funeral that I never dreamed I would be attending. A dear friend had unexpectedly lost her six month old baby. I was young and had not had classes on grief that I have taken in the last few years and I had no idea what to expect or how to respond. The hours in the car that night rolled by slowly as I longed to see my friend face to face. I found myself drawn repeatedly to prayer. I prayed, acknowledging my own sense of powerless to the One whom I knew possessed all power. I prayed, then I prayed, and then I prayed some more. 

 

Some of the prayers I've forgotten. Others I remember to this day. I prayed that God would comfort my friend and her husband through their first night. That He would be with them as they walked into their home with empty arms. I prayed that He would comfort them through the long nights that would follow when awakened to feeding times no longer needed. I prayed for the drying up of her milk to be quick. I prayed they would give each other room to grieve in their own ways and that God would give them love and grace enough to endure the extreme pain they faced together. I prayed others would be sensitive to their needs and that thoughtless comments and religious platitudes that silence people in their pain would not be spoken to them. But mostly, mostly I prayed that they would know in the deepest recesses of their hearts that they were deeply and radically loved by God.

 

Our church in Mississippi was more like family than church. So, a slew of people who, like myself, had moved away came back to be with our friends as they buried their son. After the funeral we shared dinner, talk, memories, tears, and even laughter that eased the grief. Then on Sunday my friend's husband asked the pastor if he could share his thoughts in church. Now, my friend's husband was a country boy down to the core. Yet, he expressed himself so eloquently that morning. as he thanked the church for walking with them through this tough time. Then he shared that one of the things he had come to understand in the aftermath of losing his own son, was the emotional cost for God in choosing to send His own Son to die to pay for his sin. Because of this understanding he said he had come to a deeper understanding of the love of God. I whispered thanks for answered prayer as he shared so honestly. My friends ached and they grieved long and hard as they let go of their son and the dreams they had dreamed for his life. And many lives were touched and many lives were changed. We all came to realize that the life and death of a six month old baby had the power to impact people in God sized proportions. His life was short but it was a life that mattered.   

 

Over the years I have looked through the Scriptures to see what kinds of prayers others before me prayed and for guidance in discerning God's will so that my prayers align with His will. Last week our pastor preached on the above verses, reminding me just how God, Himself lead me to pray prayers so long ago that were so similar to the prayer Paul prayed for the Ephesians. 

 

The opening line of the prayer, "That according to the riches of His glory," always convicts me of how often I forget just how big our God and His glory are. Paul, on the other hand, seemed to grasp the vastness of our God and His glory and it impacted the prayers he prayed for those in Ephesus. Paul asked that his friends would be strengthened in their spirits so that their faith would grow and that the Lord Jesus' presence would be made manifest in their hearts through their faith. That is so exactly what happened when I prayed for my friends! They were believers and as I prayed for them to be spiritually strengthened they were. As a result, they were able to connect with the heart of God and were enabled to understand His love in new and very tangible ways even in the midst of their deep grief. Because they knew the Lord and because they were connected to a church that taught the Word, they had already been rooted and grounded in loved. Those roots went down into the deepest recesses of their hearts where they needed to know in their painful losses that God loved them and had not abandoned them. They were also grounded, which refers to the strong foundation on which their faith was built.  It was built on Jesus Christ. They had come to Him by faith alone and they were shown grace and in this difficult time they were continuously being shown grace upon grace by being strengthened and enabled to see His love in the mist of hard pain. 

 

Next, Paul asked for the Ephesians to be strengthened so that they could know the fullness of God. This reminds me even more how big our God is--that we would need to be strengthened spiritually to even ponder the fullness of God. Some believe that the breadth indicates the depth of love that required a blood sacrifice being met in Jesus, the length indicates it is extended through the ages, the depth indicates the profound wisdom of God is beyond what our minds can truly understand, the height indicates our being beyond the reach of any foe to deprive us of it and to know the love of Christ.[Bengel] It may be all of that. But, one thing I know for sure is that I saw in my friends a deeper comprehension of the mystery of the gospel of grace. I saw in them a deeper understanding of Jesus' love for them. We, came face to face with the bigness of God who controls life and death in His love scarred hands. We became more intimately acquainted with the bigness of His goodness, His grace, and His love that sunk all the way the way down to the core of my friends' being where their pain had landed.  

 

As the holidays approach, I know many people are grieving for loved ones that they've lost. I know that as families gather many grieve the death of perfect families for which they have longed, struggling to come to grips with fully human, fully dysfunctional families that are. The families that are so imperfect at loving, so imperfect at meeting emotional needs, so imperfect at giving mercy and grace.

 

I know that as a year ends many of us have the tendency to look back and contemplate New Year's resolutions that we want to make but are afraid to make because we've failed so many times already. We have failed to be better. We have failed to do better. We have failed to love better. We have failed to speak words of blessing over the lives of those who mean the most to us. We have failed to extend grace. We have failed to speak the truth in love. We have tasted failure in all of its forms and it fills us with shame that says, "Why try again?" 

 

I also know that many are facing Christmas this year with families divided by separation, broken by divorce, scarred deeply by addictions,  wounded by selfishness, and torn by sinful words that rip holes in hearts. So, if I could lay hands on you and pray any prayer for you, it would be the one above--that you would be strengthened according to His infinite riches in glory in the deepest recesses of your being. That He would enable you to understand to the core of your being the height, the depth, the width, the breadth of the fullness and the bigness of our God so that you would be able to begin to comprehend the love of God--a love that is so beyond our comprehension because it goes against everything we have known experientially living in a fallen world as fallen people who often demand that love be earned. It is a love that is radically sacrificial flowing from a heart filled with infinite grace. May that be the love rooted in your hearts and may that be the foundation from which you will face this season of life--life with all of its trials, life with all of its difficult relationships, life with its regrets, and life with all of your failures.

 

May you cling to His love, ever remembering that His love is deep and everlasting as He is holding on to you. He will never ever let you go. His love is not dependent on you, it is totally dependent on Him and His flawless character. May you experience His great love this season not only in the places of happiness, but in in the places you think it most unlikely--the places of hard, the places of loss, the places of regret, and the places of failures great and small. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Living Loved and Loving It

"We love because He first loved  us."

1 John 4:19

 

 

Last week our church started a sermon series called #forfamily. We've had fun with the title of the series, because many in the church have not kept up with social media. As a result, some had never seen a hash tag used in the context of a title. Some of us have seen it, but still weren't exactly clear on how to use it correctly. Our pastor has done a great job explaining the use of the hash tag and many of us are now dangerously armed with just enough information to cause our children to cringe when we use it incorrectly. In spite of the trendy title, the first two sermons in the series were meaty and have given me a lot to chew on in regard to relationships, especially those within the family. The pastor has given me permission to blog about his sermon. So, some of the thoughts I will share originated with him, but kind of exploded in my mind. I encourage you to take a listen to his sermons at this link: http://www.riverlakeschurch.org/index.php/watch-and-listen/sermons That way you can identify more clearly my rambling and his well thought out sermons.  

 

Those of us who have been in Christian circles for awhile have heard that we are created by God in His image. I have to confess that when I don't take time to really process biblical truth I don't always grasp the ramifications of some of the great truths found in God's word. One of those truths is that we are created in God's image.

To more fully understand what it means to be created in His image, I must understand some things about God. First and foremost is the fact that He is a triune God. That means He is one God who exists in three persons. Now, I accept  it as truth. I totally am fascinated by the concept, but it is really beyond my comprehension to fully explain it. In a nut shell, it means that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one, yet three persons. They are one in essence which means all three have always existed and have always been in a perfect relationship. I conclude that God is a relational God and to be created in His image must mean we were created to be relational beings. That means first that we were created to have a relationship with God. Second, it means that we were created to be in relationships with other humans.

If the trinity was already in a complete, perfect relationship then we can know some things for certain about our God. He didn't create man because He was lonely, He had a completely satisfying relationship within the trinity. We know He didn't create man to meet His needs, because He is completely self-sufficient and self-sustaining. He didn't need us to survive. We can also know that He didn't create man because He needed someone to love Him, because He by His very nature love, so there was an infinite amount of love flowing between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. He didn't need my measly efforts at loving to feel loved.

He simply created us because He is a creative God and because it is in His very nature to love. He created us and then He invited us into an already existing perfect relationship--the pre-existing relationship of the trinity.

Further more, Jesus life, as portrayed in the gospels, gives us a picture of what God intended love to look like. First, it looks like initiation--John 3:16 makes it clear that it was because God loved that He sent His Son. He didn't just sit up in heaven and wait on others to love Him first. He sent His Son to demonstrate His love when we were still trapped in our sin and often unlovable--His love remained ever loving, ever inviting.

Second, through His teaching, we see that the love of God looked like self-disclosure. As Jesus walked, talked, taught privately, taught publically, and lived out His true self in front of His disciples, man was give a clear picture of the love that the with in the trinity.

Third, His love looked like service. He saw the physical needs and fed the multitudes. He saw when His disciples needed rest and He incorporated that into their busy schedule. He saw the sick and He healed them. He saw those bound by demons and He set them free. He, who was worshipped and anointed, sat down and washed His disciples feet the last night, knowing the last thing they would see of Him was that He served.

Fourth, His love was self-sacrificing. He left His heavenly home and He came to earth to rub shoulders with those He created. He gave of His time. He gave of His energy. He gave of His heart. He gave of His emotions through His expressions of anger, grief, and the passion with which He preached. He sacrificed His own life to make a way for us to return to the perfect relationship with the trinity--that relationship for which we were created.

Maybe to be created in His image means that we are to be lovers. I don't know about you, but when I look back on my life, I spent a lot of time trying to get love instead of loving. One of my earliest memories was being in a social setting with my family and a bunch of other families. I remember grabbing a microphone that was sitting there and belting out some song. Now, I am not much of a singer, but it was a way of seeking attention and love. Later on, I developed a strong tendency towards perfectionism thinking if I could just be good enough God would love me, my parents would adore me, my teachers would dote on me, and all of the kids at school would want to be my friend. Then I eventually got married thinking that the deep hunger in my heart would finally be satisfied,. but it didn't happen that way.

What did happen was that two very needy young adults got married, each of us thinking that the other would love us in a way that would fulfill a deep craving for love that we each had. We pushed and we pulled and we each tried to extract that love from the other by demanding it and manipulating each other for it. The more we tried to get the love, the emptier we both felt until we landed in a Christian counselor's office. Over time I began to really grasp that I had needs, my husband had needs, and our marriage had needs. Then I wrote a curriculum for our co-dependency support group and by the end of the curriculum I had come to a conclusion about marriage and why marriages so often fail. Maybe it is because two broken, needy people come together and begin to look to each other, to fix them, to heal past pain, to meet the deep love needs that were written on our hearts by God Himself. But in our case we were both so needy, neither one of us could fulfill what the other needed.

Then one tough week my husband went out of town. We had a water sky trip with our youth group. Then that night while we were at a pot luck at church one of the girls came up and tearfully told me her brother and his wife had just found out their baby had died in the womb and would be still born that night. Her brother was one of my son's best friends. So, when my son got to the dinner, I told him and he headed up to their house on his motorcycle. I had no sooner gotten home from the dinner when the phone rang. The girl told me that her brother and his wife had headed to the hospital and that I needed to meet her and my son at the emergency room because our son had had an accident on his motorcycle. No bones were broken, but he was so badly scraped up that they wanted to bandage him and watch him for awhile. He asked me to go check on his friends. His friend's parents had gone to get her mom so they asked me to stay with them. I did stay with them until the baby was born. We wept, then I went down stairs to take our son home and had to take him back to the hospital for bandage changes over the next few days. We also got a call that my step dad had died. I couldn't go, because I was tending to my son. Then Sunday evening came, and I left to help at a Christian camp. I remember sitting in chapel the first night and telling God I had absolutely nothing left to give. As I was praying, I was filled with an overwhelming feeling of being loved and found in that love the strength to grieve and to continue to minister to others. It ended up being one of the best weeks.  

As I look back I realize there was a time in which I felt the most loved and close to my husband. Ironically it didn't have anything to do with him. It was during the time that our youth had a small group of prayer warriors that we would take up to the mountains to pray. We would pray for about three hours solo and then come back together and share what we were learning and pray as a group. During that time I not only felt close to God, but I had a deep desire to love my husband and he was more loving toward me as well. We experienced a peace in our relationship and at that time our needs were filled by God and we were able to turn our expectations and demands into desires. Through counseling we also learned to communicate what we desired, without demanding it, letting the other off the hook for our happiness. It sounds easy, but it wasn't. It took a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to get there. To be perfectly honest, we are both still working on letting God be the one who fills our hearts with love so that we can love each other well.

Our pastor loves to teach about marriage and his way of putting it is that marriage is about sanctification and personal responsibility. I used to get angry when I heard him say that, but I have come to believe it whole heartedly. Because marriage is an intimate relationship it exposes our selfishness, self-centeredness, sinfulness, and brokenness and to be honest I kind of wanted to blame all of that on my spouse. But I also think that marriage exposed something more that I found terrifying at first. It exposed a deep craving for love that never felt filled. I realize it had always been there. As a child I looked to my parents for that love and then my friends and then eventually transferred that need and expectation to my mate. The exposure of that need was painful, because I feared it would never be filled. And it wouldn't be if I kept trying to extract that love from my spouse. It was a craving written on my heart by God, but it was also a craving only God could fill.

I wonder, how different our marriages, our families, out church families, and our communities would be if we empty, broken people quit trying to excise love we so desperately and legitimately need from other empty, broken people and begin to really believe and to live as ones who are already loved. Maybe we could really grasp the truth of the verse that says we to because He first loved us. In this crazy culture we will have to make time to sit before Him and let His love fill us. We will have to assume our personal responsibility to love--to initiate, to disclose, to serve and to sacrifice. So, I confess, that I am a needy person struggling to fully learn to live loved, and I am loving it! 

 

Lessons from the Garden -- Lent #5

"And they went to a place called Gethsemane.

"And He said to His disciples,

"Sit here while I pray."

Mark 14:32

(Taken from Mark 14, Luke 22, and Matthew 26)

Jesus often escaped the crowds to spend time alone with His Father in prayer. It was no different the night before His death. After sharing the Passover meal, Judas left to betray Him. Then Jesus and His disciples walked to the Mount of Olives where Jesus and three of the disciples entered a private garden called Gethsemane to pray. Jesus tells the three His soul is so "sorrowful, even to death" and told them to wait and watch while He goes deeper in the garden to pray. The three soon asleep and He prays.  

It is easy to gloss over the words of His prayer! At first glance, they seem to be simply stated, "Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will." However, Luke's account gives us some idea of the intensity of His prayer time and the emotions His disciples' are experiencing. The Lord tried to wake His friends a couple of times to pray, but Luke says they slept because of their sorrow. Luke also said as Christ was praying He was in such anguish He sweat big drops of sweat tinged with blood and the Lord sent an angel to minister to His beloved Son. 

I love Christ's prayers in the Garden for several reasons. First, it is a beautiful model of how we should handle the situations in which we experience anguish. I used to shut down when emotions rose and I couldn't even think of praying.  As I have grown in my relationship with God, I have learned to take things to Him. There were a couple of times I experienced the angst described in this passage--the push-pull of wanting my will and God's at the same time. One was when my son was hurt in an accident and His spleen ruptured. Before that night if any one asked if I wanted God's will for my children, I would have automatically said yes. That night as they rolled him away to surgery, I wanted my son to live and I wanted God's will and was terrified they might not be the same. Thankfully they were. Not long after that, our granddaughter was born three months early and I experienced the same angst. Thankfully, she survived and thrived. While we were waiting her arrival and while she was in the NIC unit, I patterned my prayers after Jesus' prayers in the garden and I did it with great emotion.   

Second, I love these passages because there are no other passage that shows both the humanity and the deity of Christ so clearly. I used to think He was wrestling with the idea of death and that it was His humanity that was struggling with dying. But a few years ago God helped me see it differently. I was out walking and listening to Christian music and praying. As I began to confess a habitual sin of which I was both ashamed and frustrated, a song about the cross started playing. In my mind I could clearly see Christ on the cross with the names of my sins etched into His body. In my mind I glanced at His face and saw Him looking at me in love. It hit me that my sins weren't just nailed to the cross They were put on Jesus Himself. As I think about that this week, I realize Christ didn't hide in the temple to avoid sin. He came face to face with sin in all of its ugly forms as He rubbed shoulders with people just like you and me. He became very familiar with the evil that dwelled in the hearts of humans. He saw the ugliness of the sins they committed against and each other and the ugliness of its impact on people and He saw the pain it caused.

He knew as He was praying that every sinful act of abuse would be placed on Him. That included every act of physical abuse, every act of sexual abuse, every act of emotional abuse, and every act of spiritual abuse. He knew that every murder committed would rest on His shoulders. He knew that every act of betrayal, whether it was physical or acts of adultery or spiritual adultery in which we allow other people or things to take the place of God in our lives. The sin placed on Him also included the sin of those who torture, control, and use others to satisfy sick needs for power and control. The sin placed on Him included addictions and all the other atrocious acts that people carry out to get their "substances" of choice. The sin placed on Him included every unkind name, every hateful word spoken both deliberately and in haste, and every lie told in the name of bullying which tears holes in human hearts and gossip which murders the reputation of people. It includes the trafficking of human beings.

The sin placed on Christ not only included sin of commissions, but sins of omission as well. Those things we know to do but fail to do. The sin of parents who fail to love, to bond with babies, to affirm with their words, to nourish hearts. feed bodies, adequately clothe, and teach them when they had the means to do so. It covers the sin of a husband failing to love his wife and a wife refusing to respect her husband. It cover the sin of not honoring parents. It covers the sins of those who have plenty selfishly refusing to feed the hungry, house the homeless, educate the needy, and even worse those of us who refuse to and share Christ with those who don't look "Christian."  It includes those who fail to witness, pray, praise, encourage, and confront cruel gossip and a believing brother or sister who is dabbling in the world. It even included Pharisees' sinful pride that kept those who were hungering and thirsting for God bound in legalism and bondage to rules and regulations that drove them away from God so the Pharisees could feel important and deflect attention away from their own evil hearts.

Christ not only knew that night He would bear the sin of man and experience the pain sin causes. He knew He was going to be facing His Father's wrath for sin He was to bear for us. He knew for the first time in eternity He would face separation from His Father. The perfect relationship would be severed. As He bore our sin, He would feel alone--so alone He would cry out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" .

I don't think Christ was wrestling with the concept of dying as much as He was wrestling with being both God and Man. As the perfect man He would bear the horrible burden of all the sin of the world-- the sin He, as a Holy God, hated and was repulsed by. He was also struggling because He knew He would soon experience the severing of the perfect relationship that had forever nourished and sustained Him. His love for man never wavered as He kept coming back to the will of His Father, but maybe He feared watching His Father's face turn away. His struggle tells us how much He cherished the relationship He had with His Father.

There are a couple of things we can take away from the Garden. First, love, real love, isn't easy! Love is sacrificial and sacrificing doesn't feel warm and fuzzy. It feels hard and it feels scary. It feels unjust and unfair. It requires delayed gratification and goes against what feels good. It requires we go to our own Gethsemane and fall on our knees, praying for His strength to obey when we are weak and incapable of doing His will. Sometimes it is only with His help that we can find the strength it takes to lay aside our wants and our desires to love God and to love others as He has loved us.

Second, we can remain faithful by keeping our eyes on Jesus who endured the cross for us even though He despised the shame and the sin that came with it. We must never forget He endured the hostility from sinners and faced the wrath of God in our place so we wouldn't. (Hebrews 12:3) We don't want to forget the price He paid. For there is not a one of us that doesn't face a struggle with sin or a struggle with obeying God's will at some point. There is not one of us that will have resisted the temptations we have faced to the point we shed blood like He shed in the Garden.. God doesn't take us through things to strengthen us, He takes us through things that reveals how weak we are so that we can learn to lean into Him through prayer so He can give us both the will and the strength to obey. Oh that I would reach a point in my own life I would want what He wants so bad I would wrestle as long and as hard as it takes to obey.  

Returning to the Beginning

We recently revised the book, Growing a Passionate Heart, that we use in support groups. As a part of our revisions we added a chapter about marriage. One of the resources I used was, When Two Become One, by Christopher and Rachel McCluskey. What I found in their book stirred in me a godly passion for marriage and for sexual integrity that I haven't felt before. The last few weeks I've contemplated other topics for writing, but this topic burns in my soul and won't go away.

I love the McCluskey's book for several reasons. First, it answered questions I asked long ago that never got answered, especially about sexuality. Second, they talk about Scripture, keeping it in its context, which gave new meanings to familiar Bible verses. I love when the familiar becomes so exciting that I can't get my mind off of it. Third, we live in a highly sexualized culture and I have seen and heard stories that deeply concern me and I know in my heart of hearts that just telling someone to stop or to just say, "No!" isn't enough to motivate them to do so. I also know loving God means obeying Him. Telling people that wasn't enough to make a difference in the struggles of those who deeply long for love and acceptance.

To explain what I mean requires I return to the beginning and the beginning is God and God created! He created man and woman in His own image and they were unashamedly naked. They communed in that state with the Creator and with each other. Imagine being naked, free, unashamed, and oh so happy, That indicates a tight connection with human sexuality and Biblical spirituality!

Then WHAM! Satan entered the garden, tempting them with the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. It wasn't the fruit that tripped them up, it was the promise that they would become like the Creator. But wait! Weren't they created in His image? That tells us something significant about Eve and it tells us something about ourselves. When Eve listened to the beguiling voice of the tempter, she forgot something essential; she forgot she was a woman delicately created in the image of her Creator! So she bit and then she shared a bite with the ever so silent Adam, violating the one boundary the Creator had given them. Suddenly, filled with shame, they covered themselves in an inadequate attempt to hide the guilt and the shame they were experiencing. As the Creator approached, they hid. He confronted with a question intended to invite repentance and they cast blame instead. Eve blamed the Serpent, Adam blamed Eve and then to top it off he even blamed the Creator.

Their choice changed everything. It killed them spiritually, leading to their physical death. It killed the trust and the intimacy they had with their Creator and with each other. It separated their sexuality from their spirituality as shown by their core of shame that exposed their sin and caused them to cover their nakedness. Shame, that horrible emotion that exposes the fear of truly being seen. That emotion that exposes our fear of being really known. Shame that causes us to hide and become protective of ourselves. Yet, amazingly the Creator reached out and He clothed them in animal skins, showing that He Himself would provide a sacrifice sufficient to cover their guilt. 

Now, fast forward past a bunch of sad stories of jealousy, murder, and worldwide sin and violence that lead to a judgment through a catastrophic flood and we find a barren couple, old in age, living in a culture seeped in pagan worship whose gods were fertility gods. The sacrifices given to appease the gods were virgin daughters who were sexually taken by temple priests and babies who were burned as offerings. Sexuality that was no longer used in its intended spiritual context was no longer marked with love or integrity. 

But the Creator, full of grace, called out the older barren couple, telling them to separate themselves from the culture and go to a new land. In return He would give them a child of their own. The Creator sealed His covenant with them by having the man shed his own blood by cutting away his foreskin, forever marking himself with a constant reminder of the Creator's and his covenant. They obeyed and with a few lapses in trust and an attempts to help God fulfill his promise of a child the Creator graciously reaffirmed He covenant. In the midst of their doubt and their unbelief, at just the right time, He gave the elderly couple a child of their own and they named the child Laughter! Through the covenant with the man, the Creator revealed Himself as the true God of life and of fertility. Through the covenant, He seeks to heal the fracture between human sexuality and Biblical spirituality.

Scripture makes it clear that covenant marriage is a picture of the covenant relationship Christ has with His church. Scripture also makes it clear that the Creator's plan includes sexual integrity. From the beginning sex has been a gift from the Creator. The gift serves several purposes in our lives that we have lost sight of. Sex was given to us to serve as the sealing of the covenant vows between a man and a woman. The Creator designed us with bodies that were different. His to be aroused by sight to insure pursuit of relationship and hers to be aroused by emotional intimacy requiring lifetime commitment which gives a safe place to remove masks and be emotionally and physically naked with each other. In His grace, the Creator designed us with millions of nerve ending in just the right places for sheer pleasure followed by an abundance of hormones that are released as a couple fully gives of themselves to each another that causes a couple to bond in joyful connection. The more frequently they participate in the act, the closer they will be. Who can find fault with a beautiful plan like that?

My heart grieves that we are living in such a sexualized culture that we are removing the bond between our sexuality and our spirituality and the bond that should exist between a couple who is committed for life. Pornography is rampant, selfish, and addicting and in no way reflects the relationship between the Creator and His church. Rather than being loved and cared for in homes where marriages reflect the Creator, many children are growing up in homes broken by sin, selfishness, violence, perversion, and some are even being sacrificed to the Evil One through sexual abuse as they are raped before they even start school.

The statistics are not much different for believers. In this day of "free sex" we are destroying the part of us that is supposed to bond with another person. If a girl has sex with twenty people before she is married, the only way she can disconnect is to disassociate from the bonding hormonal process. I remember many years ago that girls who had sex and then broke up were crushed by the break up. Now, they hook up instead, claiming it is less complicated. It is not just young people doing this, it is people of all ages. Yet, everyone is still seeking something they can't find.

When are we, as believers, going to rise up and teach our sons to be sexually pure? When are we going to challenge them on their sense of entitlement of sex for a date? When are we going to teach them that to mistreat a young woman who says, "No," is abusive and wrong on so many levels? When are we going to challenge them on a double standard that rakes Miley over the coals and allows the older young man who was twerking with her off the hook? We are we going to teach our sons to look at the young women in their lives as creations of the Creator, as daughters of the King of kings, as potential spouses to be protected and whose precious virginity to be preserved? When are we going to teach them that they have no right to even ask a girl to have sex outside of marriage? When are we going to quit saying "boys will be boys" and "men will be men? If we believe that the Creator God is infinitely wise, then surly we know guys are not simply victims to their raging hormonal bodies. It is time for us to teach our young men to quit abusing and using young women. When will we explain to them that one out of four young women has already been abused and to not respect her and show her honor will forever put him in the class with those who previously abused her and will deepen the gaping wounds in her already broken heart.

When are we, as believers, going to rise up and teach our daughters to be modest? And I don't mean frumpy clothing, hiding beautiful young bodies behind sweatshirts and bulky sweaters. I am talking about instilling in them a dignity and God-confidence that commands respect and proper treatment and a willingness to walk away from all that is not holy. A dignity that would never entice a young man to lust or enter a sexual relationship before marriage just so she can feel a false sense of security. When are we going to teach our daughters that their bodies were bought with the blood of Christ and they are not their own to give away outside of marriage? When are we going to teach them their identity comes in being the daughter of the King of kings, fully loved and accepted, not in a false acceptance that comes by trying to hold on to a young man by giving up their virtue to a demanding date who doesn't deserve it? 

So, we live in a highly sexualized culture that is supposed to be advanced, but wants what it wants when it wants it. And as a result depression and anxiety and suicide are rampant. Babies are being savagely sucked out of their moms' wombs. Sexual abuse is growing in numbers along with incidences of kidnapping and sex trafficking. And STD's are leaving couples infertile. And at then end of the day people are still lonely, disconnected, and discontented as they keep looking for something that never ever satisfies.

What if what we all want in our heart of hearts is what the Creator created us for and is continually calling us back to--real love symbolized by a blood stained cross and hands scared by the nails that pierced them? What if Intimacy with the Creator Himself is what truly feeds the deepest parts of our hearts and teaches us to love with a love that is long lasting, committed, fulfilling, and binding through integrity and appropriate sexual acts in their proper context.

I wonder what would happen if we, one by one, turn back to what the Creator has called us. I wonder what would happen if we begin to live it and model something our young people will want with all of their being--to know the Creator and to be fully known by Him so that they are safe enough and strong enough and loved enough that they can choose to love another with all that they are, not the fractured parts of themselves that their sin is killing. What if we refuse to let our children be prematurely awakened sexually so obedience to the Creator's plan is doable, feels right, and offers deep soul connection and satisfaction. What if, just what if God was right all along?

Remain in His Love

Most of us have wondered how much we are really loved. Amazingly, God tells us the answer to that in John 15:9-12. "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.  Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in His love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this; Love each other as I have loved you." Christ tells his disciples that He loves them just as His Father loves Him. When we think about that it has a lot of implications. Jesus was loved with an eternal, radical, unconditional, abiding, consistent, and bold love. It was a love that motivated Him to action and it was a love that was sacrificial. Christ demonstrated that love for us in His life and His death. His Father demonstrated His love for us by sending His son to pay for our sin and by giving us His Holy Spirit as a seal, comforter, and teacher. 

What does it mean to remain in His love? Christ tells us that if we obey His command we will remain in His love. At first this seems like God loves with a conditional love. However, it wasn't a condition as much as recognition of the way we react when we sin. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they hid from Him and He pursued them. Peter left his ministry and returned to his fishing profession when he denied Christ and Christ pursued him to restore him to ministry. As children, we hid form authority figures when we did something wrong. And as adults, we are no different than the Biblical characters who hid. If we are honest, we probably still have a tendency to want to hide the things that we feel shame over from friends and mentors. For me personally, my hiding comes from the fear that I will be rejected if I share the “bad parts of my heart.” But the more I understand about God and His unconditional love, the more comfortable I am sharing my faults with Him and the more I trust He will help me grow. 

          The main thing God wants us to do is to love one another as Christ loved us. That means He wants us to extend grace and speak truth. It means accepting a person where they are and then gently reminding them what God wants them to become. If someone shares a struggle, we need to accept that that is where he or she is at the moment. If we listen and love first, we earn the right to encourage him or her to let God remove the struggle and replace it with godliness. We are more helpful when we remind them that their God is bigger than their struggle. If someone shares that she is struggling with temptation, we can accept the truth of the struggle with out judgment and then offer support and accountability as we remind her that her God is bigger than her sinful urges. If someone is struggling with an addiction we can remind her that her God is bigger than the angst of addiction and walk her through the struggle. If someone is struggling with sins of the tongue, we can remind her God is big enough to help her control the impulse to use the tongue in a negative way. We can encourage a person to get to know God, who is powerful enough to change even the worst of sinners. 
          When we are struggling, it is wise to make sure we are real and have people who love the real us. They can’t if we wear a mask to cover our struggle with sin. We know it is risky, but we are called to live in the light and confess our sin to one another. Sometimes fear drives us to wear masks so others won’t reject us. The truth is that some people won't love us if we are real no matter how hard we try to get them to. Little children who grow up in a secure environment are great because what you see is what you get. They are happy one moment and angry the next, silly one moment and crying the next. We need other believers in our lives that allow us to be that real. If we cover up our struggles with love, temptation, anger, and forgiveness, we don't give the people God places in our lives the opportunity to love the real us—when someone loves the “fake person” we present, we still feel unloved. We need people who not only accept our goodness, but our "badness" as well. And we them to be bold enough to encourage us to work through our struggles and grow in Christ. If we love each other, we remain in Christ's love and we will experience His joy and our own joy will explode. 

           When we feel unloved, we can be real with God about that and cling to the truth that Christ has loved us in the same way and the same depth that God has loved Him. We can trust His love no matter what we have done or what we have thought. When we feel unloved, we can remember the time we were most aware of His love and know that love is still radically true. We can look for hidden sin and confess it and know that forgiveness is sure. We want to be like John, the apostle, who stayed as close to Christ as He could. We want to abide against His chest where we can hear His heart beat and listen to His words--"as the Father has love me, so I have loved you.   

Prayer:  Lord, thank you for loving us like You do. Help us to remain in Your love and to love others in the same way. Help us to remember when we fail and want to hide that You want us to remain by confessing it to you. Lord fill us with strength to know and understand you love.  Amen.